{"id":39238,"date":"2023-05-01T15:07:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T19:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=39238"},"modified":"2023-05-03T14:06:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T18:06:56","slug":"turmoil-behind-siri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/turmoil-behind-siri\/","title":{"rendered":"Turmoil Behind Siri"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wayne Ma<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Late last year, a trio of engineers who had just helped Apple modernize its search technology began working on the type of technology underlying ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI that has captivated the public since it launched last November. For Apple, there was only one problem: The engineers no longer worked there. They had left the company to work on the technology, known as large-language models, at Google.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Chance Miller<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A new report from The Information<\/a><\/em> today goes in-depth on the apparent chaos inside teams at Apple working on Siri and artificial intelligence. According to the story, “organizational dysfunction and a lack of ambition” have plagued Apple’s efforts to improve Siri and the backend technology that powers it.<\/p>

This dysfunction has led to Apple falling further and further behind competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, leading some Apple employees to question the future.<\/p>

Today’s report is based on “interviews with more than three dozen former Apple employees who worked in its AI and machine learning groups.” The report follows a similar story<\/a> from The New York Times<\/em> earlier this month, which explained how Siri is built on a “clunky” database that ultimately leads to it taking “weeks” for Siri to be updated with “basic features.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Hartley Charlton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Apple’s virtual assistant is apparently “widely derided” inside the company for its lack of functionality and minimal improvement over time.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Apple executives are said to have dismissed proposals to give Siri the ability to conduct extended back-and-forth conversations, claiming that the feature would be difficult to control and gimmicky. Apple’s uncompromising stance on privacy has also created challenges for enhancing Siri, with the company pushing for more of the virtual assistant’s functions to be performed on-device.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

This is weird because I think the main problem with Siri is not the missing sophisticated stuff like conversations but that the basics remain unreliable. And for all the talk of on-device Siri<\/a>, basic tasks like creating reminders still need network access, and tasks like controlling the audio, which should definitely<\/em> run on device without any sophisticated AI, are still incredibly slow and buggy.<\/p>\n\n

Apple’s design team repeatedly rejected the feature that enabled users to report a concern or issue with the content of a Siri answer, preventing machine-learning engineers from understanding mistakes, because it wanted Siri to appear “all-knowing.”<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Most recently, the group working on Apple’s mixed reality headset were reportedly disappointed by the demonstrations provided by the Siri team on how the virtual assistant could control the headset. At one point in the device’s development, the headset team considered building an alternative method for controlling the device using voice commands because Siri was deemed to be unsatisfactory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Maybe all that is true. But what I cannot understand is why anyone would think users would want to have a conversation with Siri, when many would probably settle for a version of that basic database association schema working correctly.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It is not the case that Siri is failing to understand what I am asking it to do. Rather, it is faltering at simple hurdles and functioning as an ad for other Apple services. I would be fine with Siri if it were a database that performed reliably and expectedly, and excited for the possibilities of one fronted by more capable artificial intelligence. What I am, though, is doubtful — doubtful that basic tasks like these will become meaningfully better, instead of a different set of bugs and obstacles I will need to learn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n